Getting FrameMaker to keep hyphenated words together??

[Robin_K...@adobeforums.com]

Hi,

I have a word that must always appear as one, never split, the problem is that it is hyphenated. For example, the word A-FORCE (a product name) tends to split at the hypen at end of lines. I just cannot seem to get this to stick together so that the word doesn't regard the hyphen as a place to split. Looking at the user manual and online help showed some examples, but not when you have a hypen in the word itslef. This is for version 7.0.

Help would be appreciated.

thanks in advance
Robin

[Ami_Mi...@adobeforums.com]

You have to put a supress hyphen code into the word. Click anywhere in the word, then press 'Esc n s' (press the button Esc, then press the letter n, then press the letter s, don't hold them at once but press one at a time in order).

If you have text symbols set visible, a underscore will show up under the word.

[Ami_Mi...@adobeforums.com]

I forgot to add, I don't know about the Unix versoin of Frame or the earlier versions, but this is works in Frame 7.0 (it is in the online documentation for Frame 7.0).

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Robin:

You want a non-breaking hyphen. Unfortunately, it's not possible to find "non-breaking" or "non breaking" in FM help. However...

Use Help > Help Topics > Search to search for "hyphen" without the quotes. The topic you want is "changing hyphenation and line breaks." Scroll down to non-breaking hyphen information.

HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

[Robin_K...@adobeforums.com]

OK, thanks for the help ... but, the next issue ... is there any way of doing a find and replace on all occurences of this word. Like I have it many many times in the document, and it would be neat to be able to replace it without having to edit each one manually. From what I can see, the Find/Change dialog does not like the ESC - h codes, it just accepts them as plain text?

Thanks again,
Robin

[Ami_Mi...@adobeforums.com]

To my knowledge of Frame (which isn't much), I don't know of a way you could enter codes (which is what the Esc n s is) into a Replace part of a Find/Replace. But again, I'm not an expert.

[Ian_B...@adobeforums.com]

Robin,
You could try editing one example of your A-FORCE string to have the non-breaking hyphen and then copying this string to the clip board. Now go to the Search and Replace, enter the A-FORCE string as text in the search and select "by pasting" in the Replace drop down list. Now you can do a complete search and replace.

However, there's a drawback to this. That is the copying also copies character formatting, and so by pasting also pastes the character formatting. So if A-FORCE appears in different formatted occurences then they all will become one and you have to apply default para formats. To avoid this you might want to create a variable for A-FORM. The variable definition for A-FORM would be <default font>A\+FORM. Now if you copy this you can do a search and replace as above but the A-FORM expression will take on the format of the para in which it is pasted and have a non-breaking hyphen.
Hope I got all this right and it works for you.
Cheers
Ian

[Bill_D...@adobeforums.com]

Hmmm... forgot to add that you *do NOT* need to check "Use Wildcards" to use backslash codes in Find/Replace. They work whether or not you're using true wildcards.

-Bill

[Ami_Mi...@adobeforums.com]

aahh, ok. That is great, that'll really be helpful.
Thank you Bill.

[Bill_D...@adobeforums.com]

I don't know that you can enter the suppress hyphenation code (Esc n s) into Find/Replace, but you *can* enter a nonbreaking hyphen, which I think is what Robin really needs. (Frame wouldn't hyphenate "FORCE" anyway, would it?)

The dialog box code for a nonbreaking hyphen is "\+" (not including quotes), so the following...

Find: A-FORCE
Replace With: A\+FORCE

...will, I believe, give Robin the desired result. This is better/easier than searching and replacing by pasting because when you paste you're pasting not only the words, but the formatting, as Ian points out.

BTW, the dialog box codes for special symbols work in the "Find" box as well as replace, and in autonumber formats as well.

[This is valid for FM 5-7 on Windows; I make no warranty for other versions/OSs.]

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Bill wrote:

(Frame wouldn't hyphenate "FORCE" anyway, would it?)

Hyphenation in FM works like this:

* Set hyphenation ON/OFF for a paragraph format, or by length of word, in Paragraph Designer > Advanced Properties.

* Set hyphenation for specific words in the spelling checker. Tee current hyphenation, type the word into the spelling checker text box, and click Show Hyphenation. To change hyphenation points, move, add, or delete the hyphens, click Learn. To prevent hyphenation, remove all hyphens, add hyphen at the beginning of the word, click Learn. The hyphenation in the dictionary does not override No Hyphenation setting for the paragraph. "No means No."

AFAIK, all hex codes (backslash character codes in dialog boxes) are uniform across FM platforms.

Related:

You can add all "unknown" words to a dictionary from the spell checker, so you can create a file with all special words for your company, customer, site, etc., to a file and have them all added at one swell foop (sic). Read more about the dictionaries in Help. and the online manual "Customizing Frame Products."

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

I think you missed Bill's point - he was simply remarking (rhetorically) that FM's dictionary is unlikely to have hyphenation points defined for "force".

[Ian_B...@adobeforums.com]

Nonetheless, I think it was a neat contribution from Peter to round of the discussion for any future researchers of this sort of topic.
Cheers
Ian

[Bill_D...@adobeforums.com]

Dominic was right about my intent, but Ian was also right about the value of Peter's post. I think this has been a useful thread for all of us.

-Bill

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

For those on this thread who are not from the USA, I'd like to sum this up with a quotation whose author I can't remember. The discussion was about regional accents in this country.

"There are parts of this country where most people pronounce the word 'pen' in two syllables."

Thanks, everyone for participating in knowledge sharing. However much I try to contribute, I find I usually learn more!

[Se...@adobeforums.com]

It would be nice for there to be a setting that prevents FM from hyphenating and breaking across two lines the very last word of a paragraph.

Thoughts?

Sean

[Se...@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, I found this:

"To prevent the last word in a paragraph from hyphenating, set the maximum number of adjacent hyphens to 0 or choose None for the language for that word in the Character Designer. (However, setting Language to None prevents the word from being spell-checked.)"

Cheers,

Sean

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

I think I saw something like this in online FM Help. Search for hyphen.

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

You could use the do not hyphenate approach mentioned earlier in this thread, ! n s.

I think that in ID, there are some settings that can be designed into paragraph styles that could specify this typograhical refinement, among others. This is not a fact, just a thin thread of memory.

HTH

Peter

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

FM's method for not hyphenating the last word in a paragraph is hardly a suitable solution, in my opinion. ID doesn't do any better - it doesn't have a setting for this either. Ventura's the only program I know of that does, and it also has a "do not hyphenate over page/column break" setting that FM could do with. FM is quite deficient in several typographic areas, and it could do a good going-over in this regard. For example, widows and orphans should be given separate dialogues, not lumped together as one. The latter treatment may be perfectly acceptable to an engineer or a software programmer, but it isn't to a typographer.

[Peter...@adobeforums.com]

Dominic:

FM wasn't ever a typograher's program. Here's where ID's features can help. If you have ID, even a time-out sample, look for the flush space special character that you can insert on the last line of a justified paragraph, to avoid spacing a few words out across the line.

Also, ID has paragraph-based composition, a choice you can make to avoid single-line composition; this gives better distribution of word spaces in a paragraph, and may reduce last-word hyphenation.

You might also look into ID's nested character styles. I'm not sure how much you can do with these - "nested" in ID means character styles applied within paragraphs. Perhaps there's a way to apply such a nexted tag to the last word in a paragraph.

You may want to look into a macro-recording tool for your platform, if you're not using FM on UNIX (which has a built-in keystroke recording tool). You can create a macro that finds the last word in every paragraph and applies the keystrokes for do not hyphenate (Escape n s - I think if it as "no split.), then moves on to the next end of paragraph.

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

FM may never have been advertised as the bee's knees of typography (as InDesign has been), but I don't think it should be expecting too much of a publishing program to have such basic typographic features as I mentioned above. It's always staggered me that FM doesn't even have force justification. And InDesign especially should have the "do not hyphenate" controls mentioned if it truly is to claim it has the best typographic control around.